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Ecphrasis

Art
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poem that responds to, describes, or imaginatively enters a work of visual art. It often explores the relationship between seeing and speaking.

Detailed Definition
Ecphrasis is the literary representation of a visual artwork, though contemporary usage also includes poems inspired by photographs, films, monuments, and other objects of art. An ekphrastic poem may describe visible details, invent a scene beyond the frame, address the artist, or question the act of interpretation itself. The form highlights the differences between image and language, asking what a poem can reveal, transform, or conceal when it encounters art.
Example
Example in poetry:
W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” is ecphrasis because it meditates on paintings of Icarus, especially Bruegel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”; John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” imagines scenes on an artwork and reflects on their meaning; William Carlos Williams’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” uses Bruegel’s painting to reconsider whose suffering receives attention; A student can write an ecphrastic poem that describes a portrait’s colors and pose while inventing the sitter’s unheard thoughts
Additional Notes
Ecphrasis is more than visual description. An ekphrastic poem may address an artwork, imagine its hidden story, question the act of looking, or challenge the artist’s viewpoint. Identify details borrowed from the artwork and details invented by the speaker. Related forms include portrait poems and museum poems.
Other Meanings of “Ecphrasis”
Also Known As
Ekphrasis Ekphrastic Writing Ekphrastic Poetry
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